• What do you mean by that phrase?
• Can you support that statement?
• How do you define that term?
• How is this observation important?
• How did you arrive at this conclusion?
• Do other experts agree with you?
• Is this evidence up-to-date?

• Who is the author? (Age, education, current profession, professional background will influence his/her opinions.)
• Where was the article originally published? (Popular magazines are written to a general audience; scholarly journals are usually written to professionals.)
• When was the article originally published? (Is it historical or current? Is it still relevant?)
• What does the title reveal about the subject and the author's attitude toward it? (Is it negative or positive? Is there a comparison?)

• Find the topic and the claim.
• Read the first one or two paragraphs and the conclusion paragraphs.
• Read the first sentence or two of each paragraph.

• What do I know about this subject?

• What have I read or heard about it recently?

• What attitudes or opinions do I have about the subject?

• Highlight or underline key words or ideas.
• Write questions in the margins.
• Circle words or phrases that need to be defined.
• Add comments of your own that support or challenge the writer's.
• Draw lines between related ideas.
• Note the writer's use of transitions/qualifiers that subtly shade the meaning.
• Point out with arrows or asterisks particularly persuasive passages.
• Mark difficult to understand passages that need a closer look.

• A summary is considerably shorter than the original (only the main ideas).
• A summary is written in your own words (don't copy the author's words).
• A summary is objective (no comments or personal opinions).
• A summary is accurate (don't change the author's meaning).
• A summary is thorough (don't leave out any main ideas).

Analyze and Evaluate the reading: break the argument down into its separate parts, examine those parts closely, and evaluate their significance and how they work together as a whole.

• What are the writer's assumptions? (What does the writer take for granted about the reader's values, beliefs, or knowledge? What does the writer assume about the subject?)
• What kind of audience is the writer addressing?
• What are the writer's purpose and intentions?
• How does the writer accomplish those intentions?
• What kinds of evidence has the writer used--personal experience, scientific data, outside authorities?
• How convincing is the evidence presented? Is it relevant?

• Does the writer's logic seem reasonable?
• Did the writer address opposing views?
• Is the writer persuasive?

• Note any points that contradict your own experience or opinion.
• Note anything you are skeptical about.
• Write down questions you have about the claim, reasons, or evidence.
• If something seems forced or unfounded, note why.
• Look for logical fallacies (accidental or intentional) that exaggerate the evidence or use faulty logic.
• Also note powerful points, interesting wording, original insights, clever or amusing phrases or allusions, well-chosen references, or general structure.

• One article provides only one perspective. The more perspectives you read, the better your understanding of the subject.
• Compare various readings/points of view.
• How do the facts relate to one another? How are they alike? Different?

Deliberate about the reading: reach your own conclusion.

• Consider each of the writers' claims and main points.
• Define your own position on the issue.

Look for Logical Fallacies: errors in logic.

• Ad hominem: a personal attack on the opponent rather than his/her views: name-calling, character assassination (51).
• How could Tom accuse her of being careless? He's such a slob.
• If course Helen claimed that O. J. Simpson was innocent. She is black, after all.
• We cannot expect Ms. Lucas to know what it means to feel oppressed; she is the president of a large bank.

• Ad misericordium: an appeal to pity (52).
• It makes no difference if he was guilty of Nazi war crimes. The man is eighty years old and in ill health, so he should not be made to stand trial.
• Paula is fourteen years old and lives on welfare with her mother; she suffers serious depression and functions like a child half her age. She should not be sent to adult court, where she will be tried for armed robbery, so she can spend her formative years behind bars.

• Ad populum: an appeal to the prejudice and emotion of the masses (52).
• High school students don't learn anything these days. Today's teachers are academically unprepared.
• If you want to see the crime rate drop, tell Hollywood to stop making movies that glorify violence.
• Doctors oppose health reform because it will reduce their large incomes.

• Bandwagon: appeal to fear of being different, left out. (53).
• Everybody's going to the Smashing Pumpkins concert.
• Nobody will go along with that proposal.
• The majority of the American people want a constitutional amendment outlawing flag burning.

• Begging the question: pretending that an assumption (which is not yet proven) is a fact (53).
• That foolish law should be repealed.
• She is compassionate because she is a woman.
• If you haven't written short stories, you shouldn't be criticizing them.

• Circular reasoning: the conclusion of a deductive argument is hidden in the premise of that argument (circular) (54).
• People who are happy with their work are cheerful because they enjoy what they're doing.
• Only a welfare mother can appreciate the plight of a welfare mother.
• Bank robbers should be punished because they broke the law.

• False analogies: when two things being compared do not match feature for feature (54).
• The Ship of State is about to wreck on the rocks of recession; we need a new pilot.

• This whole gun control issue is polarizing the nation the way slavery did people living above and below the Mason-Dixon Line. Do we want another civil war?

• Letting emerging nations have nuclear weapons is like giving loaded guns to children.

• False dilemma: simplifying a complex issue into an either/or choice (55).
• English should be the official language of the United States, and anybody who doesn't like it can leave.

• Movies today are full of either violence or sex.

• Either we put warning labels on records and compact discs, or we'll see more and more teenage girls having babies.

• Faulty use of authority: an expert in one area is used as an authority in an unrelated area (55).
• You should buy these vitamins because Cindy Crawford recommended them on television last night.
• The American Bar Association states that second-hand smoke is a serious cancer threat to non-smokers.
• Americans shouldn't find hunting objectionable because one of our most popular presidents, Theodore Roosevelt, was an avid hunter.

• Hasty generalization: arriving at a conclusion based on too little evidence (56).
• That shopping mall is unsafe because there was a robbery there two weeks ago.
• I'm failing organic chemistry because the teaching assistant doesn't speak English well.
• This book was written by a Harvard professor, so it must be good.

• Non sequitor: drawing a conclusion that does not follow from the premise (57).
• Mr. Thompson has such bad breath that it's a wonder he sings so well.
• She's so pretty; she must not be smart.
• I supported his candidacy for president because his campaign was so efficiently run.

• Post hoc, ergo propter hoc: "after this, therefore because of this," calling a coincidence a cause/effect relationship (58).
• Just two weeks after they raised the speed limit, three people were killed on that road.
• I saw Ralf in the courthouse; he must have been arrested.
• It's no wonder the crime rate has shot up. The state legislature voted to lower the drinking age.

• Red herring: information used to distract the reader from the real issue (58).
• Even though that hockey player was convicted of vehicular homicide, he shouldn't go to jail because he is such a great athlete.
• Susan didn't hire John for the job because his wife is always late for meetings.
• The teacher gave me an F in the course because she doesn't like me.

• Slippery slope: claiming that one event will inevitably lead to a chain of other events (59).
• Legalized abortion is a step toward creating an anti-life society.
• A ban on ethnic slurs will mean no more freedom of speech.
• If we let them build those condos, the lake will end up polluted, the wildlife will die off, and the landscape will be scarred forever.

• Stacking the deck: providing only evidence that supports a claim while withholding contrary evidence (59).

• Parents should realize that private schools simply encourage elitism in young people.

• We cannot take four more years of her in office, given the way she voted against the death penalty.

• Dicken's Bleak House us six hundred pages of boring prose.